Daily News Brief: AMD Updates Roadmap, 12-Core Processors on Horizon

AMD Nixes 8-Core Processors

According to AMD's recently updated roadmap, the chipmaker plans to jump from a 6-core chip (Istanbul) to 12 cores (Magny-Cours) in 2010, killing earlier plans to release 8-core processors. The dodeca-core part, which is being targeted at servers, will feature 12MB of L3 cache and support DDR3 RAM on a 45nm manufacturing process. More details here.

Cooler Xbox 360 Coming in August

It won't sport a Blu-ray player no matter how many rumors say otherwise, but you can expect Microsoft to release a cooler running Xbox 360 console late this summer, which should help reduce the inordinate amount of Red Ring of Death fatalities. The new version, code named Jasper, will shrink both the GPU and North Bridge down from 90nm to 65nm, matching the size of the recently shrunken CPU found in the Falcon refresh.

Social Network Hopping

Have you grown weary of MySpace and seek new adventures and possible LTR with other social networking sites? 'No problem!,' says MySpace, who Thursday announced it will start letting users automatically transfer profile information to other social networking sites. MySpace plans to kick off the "data availability" project in the coming weeks by letting members share profile information with Yahoo, Ebay, Photobucket, and Twitter. And what about Facebook? MySpace says that's a possibility. Much more here.

Underground Economy

All those phishing attempts and virus-laced emails are much more than a hobby, and help support an dark underground economy run by digital thieves. Ever wonder what your bank account would be worth to these crooks? In a startling blog post, McAfee answers that question. The author claims to have uncovered one such site selling stolen accounts and posted a screenshot. The seller even offers certain guarantees, such as a replacement policy if the buyer is unable to log on to the stolen account within 24 hours. Take a look here.

DRM Still Alive and Kicking?

The RIAA thinks so, and doesn't seem too concerned with the recent trend towards DRM-free MP3 files for sale. "(Recently) I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music, and 20 of them still require DRM," noted David Huges, head of the RIAA's technology unit. The RIAA sees DRM reemerging in a big way as part of forthcoming subscription services, and will push to keep it alive.

Mozilla Pulls Dirty Language Pack

Firefox's Vietnamese language pack offered on Mozilla's official add-ons site was recently discovered to be contaminated with a Trojan Horse after sitting for months unnoticed. Because the virus' signature was unknown at the time of posting, it passed Mozilla's in-house testing. Mozilla has since been pulled the language pack, and to prevent similar incidents from happening again, Mozilla has vowed to re-scan all add-ons whenever they update their virus signatures, and not just when originally posted.